Armenian Genocide Day (24 April) and Australia Anzac Day (25 April) are inextricably linked because the 1915-1923 Armenian Genocide (1.5 million dead) commenced the day before the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) invasion of Turkey on 25 April 1915 and after months of Allied shelling – but bothTurkey and Australia are still trapped in genocide denial.

April 24 is Armenian Genocide Day that remembers the 1.5 million Armenians murdered by the Turkish Government in 1915-1923. April 25 remembers Australian and New Zealand war dead in all wars (100,000 and 30,000 respectively) and derives from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and Allied invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli on April 25 1915.

Armenian Genocide Day (24 April) solemnly observed by Armenians in Armenia and around the world. It remembers the start on April 24 1915 of the last appalling process of mass murder of Armenians in Anatolia in the period 1895-1923. At the time the Ottoman Empire was being taken over by the British (Mesopotamia was invaded in1914 and indeed the racist, warmongering Brits are still there). The Russians were invading Turkey from the east. The British and French Navies had been shelling Turkey up and down the Dardanelles for weeks – a huge gathering of the British and French Armada off Gallipoli and a huge bombardment presaged the Allied invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsular on April 25 1915 involving British, French, British colonial, French colonial and Australian and New Zealand forces (the latter being called the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, or Anzacs).

The xenophobic Turkish authorities acted on April 24, the day before the actual invasion, by arresting and murdering Armenian intellectuals and leaders – priests, engineers, councillors, teachers and doctors. Subsequently - and with horrendous violence involving beatings, rape and murder – the Armenians were forcibly marched into the Syrian desert to perish from thirst and starvation. 1.5 million Armenians were murdered and the process only stopped in 1923 when there were effectively no more Armenian men, women and children to be killed.

For scholarly accounts of the Armenian Genocide see: F. Chalk. and K. Jonassohn, (1990), The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies (Yale University Press, New Haven); Gideon Polya, "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: Colin Tatz "With Intent to Destroy. Reflecting on Genocide" (Verso, London, 2003); and Tony Taylor “Denial . History betrayed” (Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2008). .April 25 is remembered as the sacred Anzac Day in both Australia and New Zealand, a day of remembrance for Australian and New Zealand soldiers who died in wars. The war dead of New Zealand (2005 population 4 million) total 30,000, proportionately much higher than for Australia (2005 population 20 million; 2007 population 21 million, war dead 102,000. The Churchill-inspired Gallipoli Invasion was a tremendous disaster for the Allies who were forced to withdraw because of the heroism of the Turkish defenders under Kemal Ataturk.

One wonders whether a kind of racist hubris persuaded the British to launch an attack on the Ottoman Empire at its very core while knowing that the well-armed and well-trained Turks would fight ferociously to defend the Turkish Homeland. Pro-Zionist warmonger Churchill had a contempt for the non-European and Muslim Subjects of the British Empire and was the architect of the disastrous Gallipoli adventure that killed 131,000 ( 87,000 Ottoman and 44,000 Allied soldiers, including 8,700 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders) and wounded 262,000 (including 165,000 Ottoman and 97,000 Allied soldiers, including 19,400 Australians and 4,800 New Zealanders).

Explanations for the Allied war against Turkey in general lie in Middle East oil resources (oil was discovered in Iran in 1909), and the seizure of the Middle East in a final carve-up of the world by Western European colonial powers. The Allied seizure of Palestine was quickly followed by the 1917 Balfour Declaration of the racist Zionist dream of a Jewish Homeland that nevertheless provided that there should be no detriment to either Jews or Indigenous Palestinians. In the event 5-6 million Jews perished in the racist Zionist-complicit Jewish Holocaust and Indigenous Palestinian have been deprived of the land that was their Homeland for thousands of years (see Shlomo Sand, “The Invention of the Jewish People”, Verso, London, 2009). In 2010 there are 7 million Palestinian refugees, most forbidden to even set foot in their Homeland; 4 million Occupied Palestinians are abusively imprisoned in their own Land, completely deprived of Human Rights and with 1.5 million incarcerated in the Gaza Concentration Camp; and 1.5 million “lucky” Arab Israelis live as second class citizens subject to numerous egregious violations of Human Rights by racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel.

However the core reason for the issuance of the Balfour Declaration according to pro-Zionist British historian Professor Sir Martin Gilbert (a pro-Zionist and pro-Iraq War member of the current Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War) was to get Russian Zionists to try to keep Russia in the First World War (see Martin Gilbert’s monumental “First World War”, p373).

The horrendous Armenian Genocide is still denied in Turkey for reasons of national reputation and respect for Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, the hero who through back the Allies at Gallipoli and the founder of modern Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire . Under "Article 301" of Turkish Law people are prosecuted in Turkey for mentioning the Armenian Genocide. Courageous Turkish writer Turkish Hrant Dink was prosecuted 3 times under the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for "denigrating Turkishness" and was assassinated in 2007 – 100,000 Turks honored him at his funeral. Similarly, courageous Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted (retrospectively) under Article 301 but courageous responded by stating: "I repeat, I said loud and clear that one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey".

The Armenian Genocide has been ignored in Australia until recent years and is never officially alluded to in the Anzac Day ceremonies – and indeed other genocides with which Australia has been associated are also remorselessly and religiously ignored in politically correct racist (PC racist ) White Australia.However times change and in recent years, over 90 years after the commencement of the final Armenian Genocide, there were some significant programs discussing the Armenian Genocide broadcast on taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) television.

Thus the respected ABC Foreign Correspondent program stated: "While the landings under fire at Gallipoli Cove on the western coast of Turkey in 1915 were seen to have helped forge Australia's national identity, at the same time in Anatolia in central Turkey ethnic Armenians were being evicted, harassed and slaughtered. Respected historians say as many as a million people were killed and many more made refugees. While in some countries such as France [and Belgium too], it is a criminal offence to deny the Armenian genocide, successive Turkish governments refuse to acknowledge it."

Indeed it is likely that the success of Labor celebrity journalist candidate Maxine McKew in ousting Bush-ite warmonger Australian Prime Minister John Howard from his own seat of Bennelong in the 2007 Labor election victory landslide was due in part to her recognition of the Armenian Genocide (there are some 8,000 Armenians living in this Sydney electorate)..

However PC Racist Australia remains extraordinarily coy in relation to its past and continuing involvement in Genocide – noting that the term is being used here as defined under International law by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention: "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

It is not only the Turkish Government who deny the Armenian Genocide (supported in this evil genocide-denial by the genocidal Bush Administration, genocide-denying American Republicans, Democrats and Zionists, and by genocidal and genocide-denying Apartheid Israel).

However it is not only the Armenian Genocide that is denied (or more precisely, ignored) by the Americans, the racist Zionists and their allies (noting that “ignoring” is vastly worse than “denial” because at least public expression of “denial” admits the possibility of pubic debate). Thus “Denial. History betrayed” by Tony Taylor (Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2008) is a very well written, well annotated and well referenced book that deals with the phenomenon of “holocaust denial” and, in general, the denial of horrendous abuses of humanity, including the Armenian Genocide.

This is an important book that should certainly be read by everyone and should be in every library. However inevitably “Denial” can be criticized and the most fundamental criticism is that this otherwise excellent Mainstream Anglo book published by a prestigious Mainstream Anglo publisher itself ignores major 20th century and ongoing 21st century holocausts and genocides due to Anglo-American imperialism e.g. the British-imposed WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million dead) (see Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008), the Iraqi Genocide (1990-2010 violent and non-violent excess deaths 4.4 million) and the Afghan Genocide (post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths 4.5 million).

Australia as a whole has a remarkable capacity for “looking the other way” and most notably in relation to the 22 genocidal atrocities in which it has been involved over 222 years (indeed 8 of these genocidal atrocities are ongoing).

A quick summary of Australia's involvement in past Genocides is provided below with excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) – noting that Australia overwhelmingly ignores or denies its association with these crimes (you can understand why Bush-ite Australian PM Kevin Rudd aka Krudd would not use the world "Genocide" in his otherwise excellent 2008 "Sorry" speech about the Australian Aboriginal Stolen Generations, 0.1 million Indigenous children forcible removed from their Mothers ). The default reference for the following is "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007.

1. 18th-19th century Aboriginal Genocide (Indigenous population dropped from about 1 million to 0.1 million in the first century after invasion in 1788).

3. British Indian Genocide (post-invasion excess deaths 0.6 billion, 1757-1837; 0.5 billion 1837-1901 under Queen Victoria; 0.4 billion, 1901-1947; 1.5 billion in all or 1.8 billion if one includes the so-called Native States of the British Raj).

4. European Chinese genocide (10-100 million deaths in the European imperialism-driven Tai Ping rebellion period; Australia was involved in suppressing the Boxer rebellion).

5. Boer Genocide (1899-1902; 28,000 Afrikaaner women and children died in British concentration camps; Australians participated in the Boer War)

6. Maori Genocide (Maori population dropped from 0.1-0.2 million in 1800 to 42,000 in 1893; Australia involved in the Maori wars)

7. African Genocide (scores of million perished over 5 centuries of slavery and colonialism; Australians participated in the Sudan war).

8. Pacific Genocide (catastrophic population decline due to introduced disease and slavery; thus 40,000 Fijians died from measles out of a population of 150,000 in 1876; "blackbirding" slavery was conducted by Australians in the late 19th century).

10. Bengali Genocide (6-7 million perished in the "forgotten" man-made Bengal Famine atrocity in Bengal and adjoining provinces in British India, 1943-1945; Australians were there and indeed the Governor of Bengal in 1944 was an Australian, R.G. Casey).

11. British post-1950 Third World Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to British occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era totalled 727 million).

12. US post-1950 Third World Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to US occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era totalled 82 million).

13. Australian Colonial Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to Australian occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era, namely Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands totalled 2.1 million).

15. Palestinian Genocide (post-invasion excess deaths 0.3 million, 7 million refugees; Australia provides diplomatic, financial and haven support for Israeli state terrorism and up to life imprisonment for anyone giving support to the party that overwhelmingly won the 2006 Occupied Palestinian elections:).

18. Ongoing Australian Aboriginal Genocide (9,000 excess deaths annually; 90,000 excess deaths in the last 12 years of Coalition rule; see “Aboriginal Genocide”).

19. Biofuel Genocide (16 million die avoidably each year but this is increasingly biofuel-impacted as the biofuel perversion forces up global food prices; Australia is a major sugar can grower and sugar exporter with 60% of sugar going to bioethanol production worldwide).

20. Climate Genocide (22 million people die avoidably each year already from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease; Professors James Lovelock FRS and Kevin Anderson say that fewer than 1 billion will survive this century die to unaddressed climate change - noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis. ; on a per capita basis Australia is among the very worst greenhouse gas polluters).

22. Muslim Genocide (9 million Muslims violently or non-violently killed in the Iraq War, 1990-2010, and Afghan War, 2001-2010, alone; 1950-2005 avoidable deaths from deprivation in the Muslim World totalled 0.6 billion; it is predicted that 3 billion Muslims will die due to unaddressed man-made global warming this century; Australia is a leading player in the ongoing and worsening Muslim Genocide and Climate Genocide).

However Australia (or more correctly Apartheid Australia, because it specifically violates Indigenous Australians and its Tamil refugees and Afghan refugee Subjects in a race-specific fashion) ignores its participation in these racist atrocities. Holocaust denial is wrong and utterly repugnant for 3 major reasons: (1) it is falsehood; (2) it is profoundly offensive to the memory of the victims, survivors of such atrocities, their loved ones and indeed to all of decent humanity; and (3) it increases the probability of repetition of such awful crimes – history ignored and history denied yields history repeated.

Indeed one supposes that it is for these sorts of reasons that Germany recently proposed a measure for the EU that would criminalize not only those who deny or diminish the Jewish Holocaust but those deliberately or inadvertently belittling any relatively recent genocide, mass murder, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. I have argued for “no-penalty criminalization” of holocaust denial and genocide denial – in order to protect scholarly freedom and freedom of speech, those found guilty of holocaust denial or genocide denial in a public judicial process would merely face the ignominy of such public exposure.

Conclusions.

One would sincerely hope that Turkey will bite the bullet, face up to its past tragic history and then move on – especially if it wants to enter the EU.

However I have no such hopes for Australia, the land of Flies, Lies and Slies (spin-based truths) – a country that continues to ignore its horrendous past and continuing association with appalling genocides. Indeed the 2008 Australia 2020 Summit, ostensibly held to offer ideas for a better Australia, totally ignored Australia's genocidal involvements (see "Australia 2020 Summit betrayed Australian Children").

Australia ignores its complicity in the Armenian Genocide just as it ignores the avoidable deaths of 24 million Asians in the post-1950 US Asian Wars in which Australia participated as a lackey of US imperialism. Invade other countries with high technology wars and you must expect millions of women and children to die.

Of course we honor the soldiers who have done their duty and fought and died for our country. However we also have a duty to tell the truth and remember the millions of innocent civilians (mostly women and children) who have died over the last century due to high technology wars and the genocidal atrocities associated with them – history ignored yields history repeated.